A Country Called Careforsythia. This is a childhood poem and is also featured in Lost in the Lost and Found with my other childhood poetry.

As a child in a furrowed field of yellow grass
in an out-of-breath hurry, I ran past
what was in yester years gone by a home,
now three walls of crumbling stone
and one wall a bank of burnt wood and grass,
red bricks tumbled and broken glass.
I ran four miles to see my friend,
to play and dream in the summer end,
through the muddy fields that the farmer plowed
I lost my shoe and my sock somehow.
I found my shoe but my sock stayed stuck
somewhere deep in the earthy muck.
I cried to think of my Mother’s glance
when I came home with a one-sock stance
but I ran on to tell my friend
of the stray dog I had encountered then
and how it had led me to the knoll
where the shrubs and bushes hid the hole
that I knew was meant for us to be
the foundation of friendship, a secret country.
The hidden walls were to be our fortress.
She and I, both Queen and Princess.
We made ourselves a sovereign to care
for subjects, the shrubs and flowers there,
and the butterfly that came on a fairies wing
to bless our country, then the insects’ sting
or was it the panic run up the fortress wall
that caused my friend to slip and fall
or the loose earth, burnt wood, and yellowed grass,
the crumbling stone, tumbled brick, or broken glass
that cut her leg and she hurried home
leaving me there to dream alone
and her mother said not to go back again.
Goodbye Careforsythia and then the summer’s end.